Pitchmarks #89 - “Kilspindie with Twigs”

The date had been fixed for a month or so. En route to St Andrews, for a Heritage Convention, Alan and I fancied a knock to collect our thoughts before the seminars began. Keen to get the twigs out, we hoped for Kilspindie, and were delighted that Boris Lietzow, a member, had kindly cleared his diary to host us. But as the days tick over, a cold wind starts to wend its way towards Aberlady, and a gloomy uncertainty hangs over our best-laid schemes.

We decide to meet in Gullane, in order that I can finally see Boris’s marvellous Jack White Shop, where the most extraordinary selection of hickory marvels can be seen through vast windows. I am transfixed by the curves of a particular long-nosed brassie when a car door slams shut behind me, and though Boris and I have never met, something in the reflection of the figure approaching tells me all that is about to change.

A few locks are grappled with, and a bell made from an old niblick chimes, and - as Boris eases himself into the week by tearing leather strips with his bare hands - I make my way around this cave of treasures in a contemplative silence, waggling hickory shafts and peering at fading cleek marks. A wave of nostalgia takes me back to my childhood indoctrination in this mystic art we study - Saturday morning lessons in the back of Dick Kemp’s Golf School, at 120 Albany Road in Cardiff. The dusty studio was up two steps at the rear of the shop, so on the way in and out, I would peer at things I could ill afford, and hadn’t the game to deploy. Some things are constant, even in golf. Then another wave rolls me into the shop at Borth & Ynyslas, where the classics of my vintage sit quietly hoping for an owner, but these places are rooted in a world barely half a century behind, while Boris’s inventory belongs in the deeper past - the past we are in Scotland to celebrate - and it is all the more wonderful for that.

Alan arrives, and he and Boris fiddle around with drivers and putters, and in the quiet, thoughtful manner in which he imparts his mastery of this realm, it occurs to me that though Boris deals in antiquities, he is very much rooted in the present. Standing by his battered workbench, whose vice claws show the same nicks as the mashies and spoons that pass through it, I have some sense of the authenticity of this soul, and suspect that his cares are somehow countered by the crisp honesty of his presence as life unfolds for him, day by day, shaft by shaft. Shot by shot, we hope, and he duly confirms that he will play after all, though the forty mile per hour winds that batter through Gullane’s high street are not altogether to his liking.

A few minutes later, we wait beside the first tee for the pair in front to clear the green. With thick gloves on, I swish my heavy iron to and fro, and wonder what today might bring. My confidence is low, perhaps recently lost in a stubborn patch of heather, along with yet another ball. All week I have been wobbly, and though the fresh air is badly needed, down south it is never quite this fresh. I am too much in my head at the moment, but listening to Boris talking about this course he so loves helps. His life has entailed many chapters, and I am intrigued not only by his current incarnation as some sort of hickory whisperer, but of a phase as a jeweller, and another as a used, classic car dealer. And a few other chapters come out of his mouth, but the thing about this damned wind is that you have to be within a gimme of the speaker to hear a thing, so I resolve to ask more another time, with luck.

I am glad to make decent contact, though my ball finds the short left bunker, in which I discover that not only have I lost my confidence, but also the ability to escape from the sand, at least with this grooveless, nameless shovel. Had I a Hamlet* - to delve once more into the landscape of my childhood - I’d have tried in vain to light it, but I don’t smoke so settle for just chucking the ball out and move on.

(*Editor’s note: the reference will make more sense after this, for the younger among you! https://images.app.goo.gl/wKjbkhWggGxN1PbT7)

Down the second, the gusts are helping, and Alan flushes his new test driver out of sight. A glint in Boris’s eye - ever the dealer - tells me he knows the sale is made in that instant, though the jury is still out on the mallet-headed Braid-Mills putter, whose eagle putt just fails to stay high enough to drop. From there, the third and fourth hug the coastline, and in between swipes I gaze at the crashing waves and delight in the stuttering whistle of a lone curlew in the shallows of Seton Sands. It is a glorious place to be, and Boris’s connection to this humble piece of land on the fringe of golf’s homeland feels positively spiritual to me.

He plays with a mad energy, punching through jiggers as if he was born to do so, and staring down putts with an intensity that is hard to fake. Sometimes it is with one hand, other times with both, stooped down low as if to will the ball in from behind, and mostly the ball doesn’t dare betray him. Once or twice, he putts left handed, with no less accuracy, and at points it seems as if Boris’s game is a dance of sorts.

Meanwhile, Alan’s metronomic rhythm, which had so calmed me when we’d played once before in the gentle stillness of the heathlands, produces a no less formidable hickory game, and his tempo and delightful manner are a soothing influence on my own jittery hacking. Between the three of us, we trade horrors and miracles throughout, but there is barely a moment when we are without smiles out here in heaven.

From the fifth tee, I finally catch my brassie well, and turn around to find my beloved tweed headcover absent. Alan and I search for a while, then I give up but he spots and locates it, halfway to Musselburgh, on a beach that has suddenly bleached golden with the recent appearance of the sun. Boris fires in another bounding attack to the green, and turns around beaming, to say “I didn’t realise it would be such fun, yah?” And he’s right, of course. The forecast had warned us of the difficulties we’d have, but how could we have spent this afternoon in any finer style?

The course reveals its sublime nature in eighteen distinct doses, and the famous eighth - titled for and perched above “Gosford Bay” - is both exquisite and devilish. Boris’s fine strike must take a particularly hard bounce, for it comes to rest beyond the stakes at the back of this marvel, while mine spins cruelly out of the bunker towards what was once The Earl Of Wemyss’s smokehouse. From here, the central section weaves in and around a natural rise towards the west end of town, and at one point, as we watch Alan defy another mighty gust with his new weapon, Boris gazes across his links, flags bending as the larks’ chorus rings out. “This could be where it all started, yah? Somewhere like this?”, and though the record books might not stretch quite that far, Kilspindie was made for golf alright, and Boris for Kilspindie.

Fifteen and sixteen - “The Graves” & “The Flagstaff” respectively - are a ferocious test into the teeth of a gale, and as the three of us lose count of our helpless swipes, and Alan loses a ball for the first time in years, Boris is tiring, and in need of respite. We shake hands on the green, and watch his old, thin-wheeled trolley trundle back to the sheltered charm of the clubhouse as we turn to face a classic closing pair of quests. At the seventeenth, “Craigielaw”, an ancient wall that separates this course from its newish neighbour interrupts the hole just shy of the green, and my pulled pitch clears the top stones by a whisker. Alan is once again in prime position, and makes another effortless three, and though my approach to the last - with Boris wielding his camera behind the green - is a terrifying prospect, I manage to smuggle it past the bunkers, and find the green, and round off the day with a rare par to match Alan’s.

Tea is taken in the clubhouse, under portraits of the good and the great of East Lothian golf, and Boris holds court with his extraordinary life in golf, digested into a few precious minutes. As Monday fades and a purple hue starts to form above distant Arthur’s Seat, a few final silhouettes drift carefully across the rolling carpet of Kilspindie, and I long to extract the last few minutes of light from this blessed place. But we must move on, heading for two days of delving into golf’s annals with the perfect tonic in our hearts. I’d arrived here racked with self-doubt, but leave with the same old ball I started with, and a distinct absence of such transitory cares.

This is what golf is all about for me. Back to basics. Kilspindie with Twigs.